NEW YORK/SEATTLE (Reuters) – Corporate lobbyists, news
organizations and academics joined forces with Microsoft Corp
on Monday in the software company’s legal battle with
the U.S. government over access to customer data stored
overseas.

The diverse set of interests filed briefs with a federal
appeals court in New York, urging it to reverse a judge’s order
that Microsoft turn over emails from a data center in Ireland.
They argued that turning them over would jeopardize the future
of international cloud computing.

NEW YORK/SEATTLE (Reuters) – Corporate lobbyists, news organizations and academics joined forces with Microsoft Corp on Monday in the software company’s legal battle with the U.S. government over access to customer data stored overseas.

The diverse set of interests filed briefs with a federal appeals court in New York, urging it to reverse a judge’s order that Microsoft turn over emails from a data center in Ireland. They argued that turning them over would jeopardize the future of international cloud computing.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A former technology officer was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison for helping to operate Liberty Reserve, a former digital currency exchange that U.S. authorities say was used by drug traffickers and other criminals for money transfers.

The sentence was the maximum allowed under U.S. law for Mark Marmilev, 35, who in September pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. He was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A mortgage lender and a mortgage
servicer that were owned by banks that became part of Wells
Fargo & Co did not cheat homeowners by charging
excessive fees, a defense lawyer told a Manhattan federal jury
on Tuesday.

Daniel Pollack, a lawyer for the two units, argued that The
Money Store, the lender, and HomEq Servicing, the servicer, did
not breach any contracts with homeowners.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York grand jury that decided not to charge a white police officer in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man heard testimony from 50 witnesses and considered 60 exhibits including four videos, a state judge said on Thursday.

The details were contained in a brief order from Stephen Rooney, a judge in the New York City borough of Staten Island who granted the request of local prosecutor Daniel Donovan to release publicly some details about the secret proceeding.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A grand jury decision not to indict a New York policeman over a fatal chokehold underscores how difficult it is to charge an officer in the United States, even when the tactic appears to contradict police department policy and is caught on video.

Although Wednesday’s decision caught some Americans by surprise, indictments of police officers for excessive force are extremely rare for political, cultural and legal reasons.

(Reuters) – Without a criminal indictment, Michael Brown’s family might have no better legal recourse than to sue local authorities for the African-American teenager’s fatal shooting by a white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer.

After a St. Louis County grand jury decided on Monday not to indict officer Darren Wilson – and given the high bar to a federal criminal prosecution – the family may follow the path of other high-profile U.S. police shootings and file a civil lawsuit for wrongful death or civil rights violations.

(Reuters) – A Connecticut school superintendent on Wednesday defended the decision to keep a 7-year-old girl out of class for three weeks out of concern that the girl might have contracted Ebola while attending a wedding in Nigeria.

Elizabeth Feser, superintendent of the Milford public schools, denied allegations that the girl’s family made on Tuesday in a federal anti-discrimination lawsuit that asked that she be allowed back into school.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The father of a Connecticut third-grader sued her local schools on Tuesday, saying his daughter was discriminated against and banned from school based on irrational fears of Ebola because she attended a family wedding in Nigeria.

Stephen Opayemi filed the lawsuit in U.S. district court in Connecticut and asked the court to order the schools in Milford, Connecticut to immediately permit his daughter to return to class.